Marathon 2025 - Bungie's new AAAA Extraction shooter

[Fae Supremacist]

I bust my ass to win 1v2 and revive my team of randos, then get sniped by the last guy left, do they go and kill that guy 2v1 while he's looting my stuff and revive me?
No, they exfil and leave me to die.
That's why I have trust issues.

If they're using these servers.

Out of curiosity I dug into what IPs Marathon connects to.

Hi there Bungie.
But the more interesting one was the one connecting to Quincy, Washington, which hosts a huge Microsoft Azure data centre, but not AWS.

I couldn't find the IP of the actual game server to check, but it could be either AWS or Azure. Sony uses Azure for their servers and PS+ but I know Destiny 2 uses AWS.

Out of curiosity I checked out how much #1 gacha game makes in a month:

Those graphs are COMPLETE bullshit and made up, only used for agendaposting and memes. They're decent to judge relative trends between games at best, their absolute numbers are nonsense.
No gacha game is actually in the top earners on mobile (it's always Honor of Kings, a Chinese Dota ripoff) but you'll never know how much Genshin is worth because it also earns indeterminate amounts from PC and console and merchandise. The only concrete numbers known are from a lawsuit that placed its revenue as "billions" in 2024 and its development costs as $250 million per year before marketing.

 

[creaturestorm]

Just the fact that you apparently don't have to unlock the game's equivalents to Jager every wipe is in itself the most based decision ever and fuck Battlestate for making me do it in the past

I have a feeling that you don't have to retread any of the old story beats, but I have nothing to confirm this. It would just be so strange from a narrative standpoint, but maybe thats the case.

(and fuck Woods (I'm bad)).

Woods is a shit map. I think most of tarkov's maps are shit just becaues they have the worst spawns imaginable.

Also heard talk here and there about not needing to extract for quest completion which on the one hand I think kind of lowers the stakes ever so slightly and doesn't give quite the same rush of joy of having done it, but on the other hand man does that sound kind of really fucking nice. Also just seen that you get freebie kits to take in, which sounds like a cool feature on top of having scav runs.

Early on the majority of tasks don't require you exfil, but this changes as you progress through the story. Still there are tasks even at the end game that don't require you to exfil, but will ask that you do a ton of crazy shit in a single run.

Honestly for as butt ass ugly as I think the game is I think I could be sold on it if it were like twenty bucks instead of forty. Maybe if it's still here in a year and I catch it with more content (no, Reddit, I will not dump money into it before that time comes even if I don't want to buy it in its current state).

I dont see them shuttering this game completely, but i dont know. Were going to have to see what Sony decides to do, because this shit isnt the golden goose they thought it was.

 

[Swine Schwein]

That's not even covering the Bungie CEO's salary for his classic car collection

He's not there anymore. I think the "beware of overdelivery" guy is the CEO now. Good times

 

[BoomerSperg1922]

It has only ever dipped that low because of either maintenance or because people are asleep, so this is delusional. It's been averaging 50k every day this week other than Friday.

View attachment 8742425View attachment 8742426View attachment 8742428View attachment 8742429View attachment 8742430View attachment 8742431View attachment 8742432

I was talking about dips not highs, sorry.

We're so close, this game is on a downward trend but its taking too long.

 

[Civillian 18]

I was talking about dips not highs, sorry.

We're so close, this game is on a downward trend but its taking too long.
View attachment 8746239

It is definitely getting there, it will be a slow burn I think. More this:

Than this:

Even so, looking at 'locked in' times week-on-week, a ~10k difference in players between that first plateau they have daily (ignore the fact I put them in the wrong order today->last week I will not fix it):

 

[creaturestorm]

It is definitely getting there, it will be a slow burn I think. More this:

This seems to be the way of things in most live service games.

 

[Disc]

If I had to guess why, I think some people held out for Cryo Archive, and decided to bounce afterwards. Could be that they hated it, could be that it required far more grinding than they were willing to stomach, could be that it wasn't the glorious endgame they were holding out for, could even be they saw it wasn't moving the needle and gave up investing in the game further. Regardless of which, we will probably see a sub-15k in the next two hours.

This is a shit guess. No ones grinding to lvl 25, doing all the introductory quests, just to play Cryo a few times before deciding to dip out.

It was just a hard weekend on the community. Cryo and ranked came out the same weekend and emptied people's vaults. Getting your nuts kicked in repeatedly and also having no gear to keep progging is a great time to take a break. The people I regularly play with were absent after saturday, the ones who were still left playing were pressuring the entire team into running with free kits (the least enjoyable way to play) so they could rebuild.

Reading this response, I think you took more issue with my tone than with my argument, because this sounds like it hits the general argument I was making - that cryo archive made people leave the game, hence the slow weekend and higher-than-expected drop. That's it's actually because they 'got kicked in the nuts and had no gear to keep progging' sounds like more specific versions of 'they hated it and it needs more grinding than they were willing to do'. Heck, I was using your own description of it as 'pretty fucking awful' as a basis for my own assumption.

I agree that it's not gonna be concord. Commnunities labelling it a Concord was really somewhat hasty in hindsight: it was the first game to receive the dubious honour, when the first playtest looked like unfettered ass, and people generally seem to accept it's done just well enough to not be a true concord. Even in my thread about Concord and it's claimed successors, I've added comments to that effect:

Despite everything, of the three main games listed as Concord's successors it is the one where the title is most hotly debated. As I write this post, the game has been released for less than 48 hours - time will tell how well it truly does. Few doubt that it will fail to meet expectations, and many suspect said failure will spell doom for Bungie as a studio, but whether it's a truly Concordian disaster or just an average disappointing flop is yet to be seen.

Two weeks have now passed for Marathon. It doesn't seem to display the typical Concord trend - rather, it's fallen largely in line with other extraction shooters, having somewhat of a niche appeal (the numbers are still trending downward, currently having dropped from an 88k peak at launch to now fighting to stay above 50k at peak hours, but that's miles better than Highguard, which went from 97k to 10.5k in it's first week). This is not significantly better for the studio; Bungie was purchased by Sony to deliver multiple Destiny-level successes, and even the most generous of reports make it unlikely Marathon has made even 100 million dollars (the lower estimate for it's budget).

While it might be surprising, it should be noted that Marathon was the first game to receive the title of Concord 2, being announced in the relatively close wake of the original. Perhaps it's not surprising that it's not reached the same level of failure as the others, having been given the title somewhat hastily. Instead, it's unique - albeit niche - design appeal and generally solid bungie gunplay are helping it slowly fade rather than crash and burn.

I was watching the count because I saw the previous discussion, checked, and realised it was actually pretty close. Adding in ol' mr. bloodfeast was just a way to poke fun at me for watching something when I frankly had better shit to do, just to win a tiny internet debate that didn't even really become a debate.

 

[StacticShock]

SiGnAtUrE BuNgiE GuNpLaY HurDuRr
People who never played a shooter besides Destiny.

it's just low recoil and low recoil attack buildup with a metric ton of magnetism, that's it.

 

[DickMain]

Reading this response, I think you took more issue with my tone than with my argument, because this sounds like it hits the general argument I was making

@creaturestorm is Marathon's strongest warrior, don't go too hard on him and his forty dollars.

 

[Professor Donger]

It is definitely getting there, it will be a slow burn I think. More this:
View attachment 8746384
Than this:
View attachment 8746396
Even so, looking at 'locked in' times week-on-week, a ~10k difference in players between that first plateau they have daily (ignore the fact I put them in the wrong order today->last week I will not fix it):
View attachment 8746423

Yeah that's why I wanted to wait for the peak player count for the week

 

[Civillian 18]

Yeah that's why I wanted to wait for the peak player count for the week

Well, peak player count for the week will be - if the trend holds - the roughly 56.5k (+ whatever console population) from this Saturday just gone. All of the expected content is available, ranked mode, cryo etc and I do not think there will be some resurgence during the week without the weekend crowds.

 

[Zenos Yae Viator]

I agree that it's not gonna be concord.

In many ways its of a different higher degree of fuckup than Concord.
Concord was, and is, one of the most disastrous media ventures in human history an immediately pissing away of 200+ million dollars, but the company that pissed it away.. we will all forget their name, just their Flagship failure, its a history blip, a " it was the biggest fuckup at the time".

Marathon isn't particularly egregious in terms of how bad it is, however, It will ultimately sink Bungie, a dynasty, once regarded as one of the premium developers in gaming, Sony and other companies dumped well over 3+ billion dollars into Bungie, to produce a game that is out paced by 9 hour single player campaign games in player retention and longevity, despite how impossible that should be, its a live service well made pvp shooter! yet its barely cresting over Elden Ring and other years old games in Concurrent players.

With Concord the failure was immediate, sharp and total, Marathon will have months, if not a year in which they will dump more and more money and effort and nothing they do will pull up.

 

[DickMain]

I wanna see it succeed, just enough for Sony to keep it on life support, if only so I can get it for like half off or more this summer ala BF2042. If EA didn't kill that thing out of sunk cost then maaaaaybe this will be around long enough for me to have a spin.

 

[wholetthegodsout]

This is a likely scenario. I totally predict a 10% off sale and a free weekend when the next season starts to pump up that player base

 

[creaturestorm]

Reading this response, I think you took more issue with my tone than with my argument,

No its the argument.

Heck, I was using your own description of it as 'pretty fucking awful' as a basis for my own assumption.

That's the core of my frustration, the shit talk is all guess work.

Nearly every post that has had a negative opinion about the game has formed it on the basis of some one else's experience and its always from a reviewer who didn't get through the tutorial section of the game. Some of their criticisms are real, but for the most part i think its all self reporting as a casual shitter with zero taste.

The game had a free to play weekend, but it's just easier to adopt some one else's perspective than give it a spin. I would say give it a try, but were too far past that.

There are other times its a Destiny fan whose extra salty that bungie milked them and killed their game and other times people are sad that this isn't yet another scifi power fantasy. I could not give a single shit about anything Destiny or anything single player. Nostalgia for what was and yearning for what could be, i get it.

Destiny game play is talked about more in the Marathon thread than Marathon.

There is also the Concordia thread available, made specifically to engage in the kinds of discussions were having here.

To clarify me not liking the new map on the first weekend doesn't mean that I wont enjoy it when i have a better footing in the game or when the community has a better understanding of it. What ever the case, it was not what was promised, which was a map to redefine the genre. Spending your week farming keys so you can run around interacting with terminals while killing the hardest AI and the sweatiest teams playing for a CHANCE to kill a complier is straight up fucking retarded.

What the fuck are we doing here exactly and why? I have to ask why the fuck are we spending so much time obsessing over killing a Compiler? Who actually gives a fuck? I think every one currently raiding Cyro Archives has a gross misunderstanding of what you're supposed to be doing on that map. Once that changes, it will be a better map.

BUT, that in it of itself is a problem, the Compiler is basically an easter egg for streamers.... Bungo, what the fuck are you doing?

I'm still playing the Halo MCC edition, it has maybe 8000ish people playing on a good day. I also play WoW classic Era, that's home to about 4000 players. No ones wondering when Activision or Microsoft are going to be pulling the plug on these servers.

Obviously these games are finished titles with a much smaller production expense. It doesn't matter if the population dips down to 1000 active players, that's still more than enough for me to catch matches/raids and the parent companies are big enough to eat the cost.

Marathon is largely an unfished game, as is the nature of live service games, that may never be finished due to having less than 100k players out the gate, whose servers may very well shut down thanks to its underwhelming release.

The active player populations dont matter, they never mattered past the first 48 hours worth of sales. Those making predictions about population are just people patting themselves on the back for the most predictable outcome possible. It's a circle jerk of self indulgence.

What I'm most interested in what is uncertain, I'd appreciate speculation here more than how many people will be playing the game tomorrow. What happens next?

Does Bungie just shutter it's doors and turn off the servers? Does Sony release another season or two of Marathon or do they just shut the servers down? If it contines to exist does it go F2P or game pass?

 

[StacticShock]

BUT, that in it of itself is a problem, the Compiler is basically an easter egg for streamers.... Bungo, what the fuck are you doing?

doing what bungo does, which is cater to streamers, they've been doing that shit for a loooong time.

 

[DickMain]

I'm still playing the Halo MCC edition, it has maybe 8000ish people playing on a good day. I also play WoW classic Era, that's home to about 4000 players. No ones wondering when Activision or Microsoft are going to be pulling the plug on these servers.

Be me on UT99

 

[Civillian 18]

"I do not need to eat shit to know that it is, in fact, shit" or some other such platitude.
As for what will happen, fuck knows. Bungie will be absorbed further into Sony. Bungie will string the playerbase along with the content in the roadmap. There will probably be another art plagiarism scandal.
They will bleed players until they smash the glass and push whatever panic button they have and then the seasonal wipe will happen and it will most likely cause the whole thing to fall down.

 

[King Dead]

I think so, but also Concord had about 700 people playing at it's peak. We will never get another concord in our life time, It was the perfect storm for a flop. The people calling everything and anything concord isn't going to make it happen any sooner. Plenty of these kinds of games are going to flop, but for different reasons and it will never steer the industry in a direction that said players want to see. Calling everything concord is just wishful thinking.

Fifteen years ago (God, time flies), I remember being on /v/ when Star Wars: The Old Republic was coming out and being hyped up as the latest WoW-killer. I remember laughing along with other anons as it launched in a pretty mediocre state and watching the server populations plummet from mostly full to nearly empty within weeks. "Tortanic" was the term we used to make fun of its demise, and for a few years afterwards, we were always looking for the next Tortanic to laugh at, but nothing ever really came close again. (And ironically, it's still getting updates all these years later, so shows how much we knew, eh?)

I think that's what a lot of people who keep calling everything the next Concord are doing, trying to will another gigantic clusterfuck into being so they have something just as mockable and memeworthy. Don't get me wrong, I love a good trainwreck as much as the next guy, and corposhits being completely out of touch with the market will never not be amusing. But the reality is that fuckups of that scale don't really happen every day, and slinging the Concord label on everything that looks kind of generic just dilutes its meaning.

Call the latest generic live service game utter garbage slop if you want, but let the shitstorms happen naturally. If and when a shitty game fails, then you can join in the fun of mocking its demise. And as a word of advice, quit obsessing over the Steam charts. I'm no Marathon defender, but it's clear the trend is fairly flat, so we really don't need a daily update. (I speak from experience, here; we did the same thing in the Tortanic days, and looking back, it was a little stupid.)

@creaturestorm is Marathon's strongest warrior, don't go too hard on him and his forty dollars.

Hey, I appreciate that there's someone in the thread actually giving some first-hand experience with the game. If nothing else, it confirms that this is definitely not the game for me. I will instead cry into my Durandal body pillow about what a new Marathon game could have been.

 

[creaturestorm]

Be me on UT99

They officially released UT2k4 for free like a month or two ago, ive been meaning to check it out. I'm not sure if there is even an online community for it.

But the reality is that fuckups of that scale don't really happen every day, and slinging the Concord label on everything that looks kind of generic just dilutes its meaning.

I think the last time this happened something like a million copies of ET for the Atari ended up in a Mexican landfill. I really think its once in a generation thing.